This invention relates to an apparatus for dispensing objects from a container, and more particularly to dispensing medication, held loosely in a container, to a patient.
As medical treatment becomes increasingly dependent on a large number of medications, the problem of these medications not being taken or not being given according to the prescription has increased to enormous proportions. Within hospitals, medication errors are frequent, sometimes resulting in tragic consequences. On an outpatient basis, the problem is much worse with patients frequently failing to take medication or taking excessive amounts of medication. Often neither the patient nor the medical care provider knows what the patient has taken. The magnitude of this problem was laid out five and a half years ago in a joint committee hearing by the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Subcommittee on Health and Long Term Care of the Select Committee on Aging, U.S. House of Representatives on Jun. 28, 1983. The extensive dimensions of the problem were reemphasized four years later on Oct. 1, 1987 when the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Assistant Secretary for Health of the U.S. Public Health Service held a news conference in which they pointed out that 1.6 billion prescriptions are dispensed annually in the United States and that twice as many prescriptions are filled for people over 65 as are filled for younger people. They further pointed out that nearly 25% of older persons' hospital admissions are due to problems with taking prescriptions incorrectly and 23% of nursing home admissions are the result of older people being unable to take medicine properly.
Patients living at home are often left with the responsibility of following directions to take medication. In addition to those circumstances where such patients intentionally fail to follow the instructions, such patients, especially feeble minded or elderly patients, often forget to take the medicine, take the wrong amount of medication, take the medication at the wrong time, take one medication according to the instruction for another medication, etc. To help solve this problem devices called medication monitors have been developed which record and control when medication has been removed from a container. Most of the medication monitors for solid units of medication such as pills, tablets or capsules usually require that someone spend considerable time filling the device, which makes them relatively impractical in routine use. Some devices consist of multiple receptacles that are each filled by hand, with each receptacle containing medication to be administered at different points in time. The use of such devices is time consuming. This problem of filling the receptacles is sufficiently daunting that one device has been commercially introduced that only records that the cover of the device has been opened, not how much, if any, medication has been removed.
Another problem faced by the elderly is the difficulty in manipulating mechanical devices due to arthritis, neurologic impairment, or inability to learn a sequence of steps. Thus, ideally a dispensing device for patients so afflicted should dispense medication without the patient having to handle the device or at least with minimal handling.
Other attempts have been made to create devices that dispense articles one at a time, but these devices tend to have unique characteristics for the type of object being dispensed. For example, the device of U.S. Pat. No. 3,392,881 entitled "Device for Dispensing Fish", issued Jul. 16, 1968 to Eriksen, has foam rubber wheels which rotate to pass a fish between them, however, this device does not demonstrate that contact between the wheels and fish consistently move the fish. Instead it achieves this objective by having portions of the wheels cut to allow the passage and to grip the head of the fish and by providing an additional element, a spike, that is used to grip and move the fish. This type of device is not suitable for medication dispensing, since pills, tablets and capsules are much smaller than fish and vary considerably in size, some being more than six (6) times the size of others. Also, a spike could crush the medication as it passed through the wheels.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method or apparatus which will dispense pills, tablets, capsules or the like one unit at a time so that the amount dispensed can be easily recorded. Another need in the art is for such a dispenser that allows the medication to be placed in a single receptacle in which it is loosely arranged, so that the receptacle can be quickly and easily filled. Still another need in the art is for a device that will dispense medication only at predetermined times and only in predetermined amounts to regulate the administration of the medication and to prevent patients that have forgotten to take medication from taking large doses to "catch up".